9 Articles by:
Helen O’Connor is an officer for the GMB union’s Southern Region.
In the coming weeks, media pundits and government ministers will tell us healthcare workers shouldn’t strike if they care about patients. The truth is that workers are striking to keep the NHS their patients depend on alive.
At St George’s Hospital in London, workers employed by outsourcing giant Mitie are striking for decent terms and conditions – and to be brought in-house on NHS contracts.
Last week, trade unionists working in the NHS failed to meet the 50% threshold in a strike action ballot. To build the industrial strength so many NHS staff need, we have to understand why.
In 2019, there were 40,000 nursing vacancies in England alone. The only way to protect the future of the NHS is to treat its workers properly – and that means a pay rise that will actually improve their lives.
With growing concern over the spread of Covid-19 in hospitals, new figures show that outsourcing led to a £38 million cut in hospital cleaning in the past decade – with the loss of 1,000 jobs.
Today, across Britain, the same NHS workers that the government called ‘heroes’ during this pandemic had to protest for decent wages and working conditions. The time for clapping is over – they deserve a pay rise.
In response to coronavirus, management in some hospitals are pushing through reforms to workers’ conditions and NHS services they planned before the crisis. To protect the NHS, we’ll need to fight back.
Years of outsourcing have left the NHS reliant on essential workers who are underpaid, insecure and often subject to bullying by private companies. It’s time to bring them all back in-house.
Outsourced hospital cleaners at the frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak have been forced to walk off the job to demand their wages. It’s time to bring all hospital cleaners back in-house and demand they be paid a real living wage.